The best books to learn Chinese, measured against the HSK word lists (video)
We measured Integrated Chinese, New Practical Chinese Reader, the HSK Standard Course and graded readers against the HSK 3.0 word lists. Picks and prices.
Chapters
- 0:00Start
- 0:23The short answer
- 0:46The best book for each goal
- 1:24What a first year teaches
- 2:40The textbook series
- 4:36Graded readers from HSK 3
- 5:32Where you buy changes the price
- 5:53Where SayMei fits
- 6:18What to do next
Transcript
Start
Most lists of Chinese textbooks recommend the same three series and stop there. So we opened the word lists instead. A first year of any series we measured teaches only 53% to 60% of the HSK 1 to 3 words. From SayMei Guides, by Mei Lin: the best books to learn Chinese, measured against the HSK word lists.
The short answer
The short answer. For a college class, choose Integrated Chinese. To teach yourself, New Practical Chinese Reader covers a little more of the HSK lists for less, from $21.76 a book. For the HSK 3.0 exam, use the official New HSK Course. And once you know about 1,000 words, start reading Mandarin Companion.
The best book for each goal
No series is best at everything, so each pick fits one goal. Integrated Chinese for a class, $69.99. New Practical Chinese Reader on a budget, $21.76 to $53.99, by shop. New HSK Course 1 for the exam, $17.94. A Course in Contemporary Chinese for Traditional characters and Taiwan. Mandarin Companion for your first whole books, $7.99 an ebook. And the cheapest readers, Chinese Breeze, about $4 a book.
What a first year teaches
A first year is two books, or three of the slimmer HSK Standard Course. By then, New Practical Chinese Reader has taught 59.8% of the 988 HSK 1 to 3 words. The HSK Standard Course, 59.2%. A Course in Contemporary Chinese, 56.3%. Integrated Chinese, 53.4%. Count easy compounds, like 他们, they, and it reaches about two thirds. The rest are mostly everyday words. 电影院, cinema, and 牛奶, milk, are both HSK 1 words, and neither is in the first-year Integrated Chinese lists we checked. So if the exam matters to you, add a word list built on the 2025 syllabus. If it doesn't, relax. A course teaches what you need to talk about your own life. It works the other way too. In the first books of the three general courses, roughly one word in six comes from HSK 4 to 6. Integrated Chinese follows students at an American college, so book one teaches 宿舍, dorm, which the HSK holds back to level 5. Neither approach is wrong. If you live in a dorm, you need that word this week.
The textbook series
Integrated Chinese is the college standard: four volumes from Cheng & Tsui, a Boston publisher, in Simplified or Traditional. It's also the most expensive series here: $105.98 for the first textbook and workbook, though the audio is a free download. By its words, the whole series reaches about HSK 3. One caveat: we measured the third edition, so today's fourth edition may differ. New Practical Chinese Reader gives the most for the money. Its first two books teach the most HSK 1 to 3 words of the four series, and all six books teach 69% of HSK 1 to 4. And the price depends on the shop. Cheng & Tsui sells book one for $53.99. Purple Culture, an online Chinese bookshop, lists the same book for $21.76. Two series follow the HSK's own word lists, and they're the cheapest textbooks here. The HSK Standard Course, written for the old exam, is $13.26 for book one, on sale. The New HSK Course is the official series for HSK 3.0, which starts this December, at $17.94 a textbook for levels 1 to 4. Its publisher doesn't post the word list, so we couldn't measure it. A Course in Contemporary Chinese comes from National Taiwan Normal University, in Traditional characters. Its first year teaches 56% of the HSK 1 to 3 words, close to the others. The difference is vocabulary. In Taiwan you ride in a 計程車. The HSK teaches the mainland word for taxi, 出租车. And Assimil? On 11 October 2026, its own shop listed the English Chinese e-course as no longer in stock. The Chinese courses it still sells come with French, Italian or German instructions.
Graded readers from HSK 3
Graded readers are stories with a limited vocabulary. Mandarin Companion grades its books by characters, from 150 at Breakthrough to 450 at Level 2. So we counted each book's different words. Know the HSK 1 to 3 words, and you know about 96% of a typical Breakthrough book, 88% of a Level 1 book, and 78% at Level 2. Imagin8 Press's Journey to the West asks for more: 67% for its first ten books. Chatbots guess at book levels. One we asked put Mandarin Companion Level 1 at HSK 1 to 2, and suggested a Level 3, which has no books yet. By the word lists, Level 1 suits a reader who knows the HSK 3 words. Its ebooks cost $7.99. For less, Chinese Breeze is about $4 a book, with levels from 300 words.
Where you buy changes the price
Where you buy can matter more than which book. A first New Practical Chinese Reader textbook and workbook: $89.98 from Cheng & Tsui, $33.45 from Purple Culture. Shipping changes the sum: Purple Culture's delivery to the US takes 5 to 40 business days.
Where SayMei fits
SayMei doesn't sell a textbook. We make tools that work alongside one: HSK word lists built on the 2025 syllabus, writing workbooks for every HSK 1 to 6 word, and SayMei Stories, with 166 graded books. Where we lose: no printed course with grammar chapters, stories that stop at about HSK 4, and no offline reading.
What to do next
So, what next? Pick one series and finish book 1. Switching early costs more than any small difference in word lists. Check your book in the guide's level checker. Buy China-printed books from an online Chinese bookshop, if you can wait. Start a graded reader at about 1,000 words. And say every dialogue out loud. A book's audio trains your ears. Only talking trains your mouth. You can practise speaking with Mei Lin, SayMei's teacher, in a short spoken lesson at your level. The full guide, with the book level checker and every source, is on the page at saymei dot app.